Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery) returns to a jungle plateau to prove the existence of prehistoric creatures.
restoration of THE LOST WORLD. It must be noted that this is not an archival restoration; it is a digital video—not 35mm—restoration, and takes a few liberties to accommodate contem­ porary audience requirements. Sadly, the recent 35mm restoration from the George Eastman House is also flawed, and thus falls short of being a definitive restoration. Having seen and enjoyed both versions, I must confess to pre­ ferring Shepard and Bromberg’s over the Eastman House restoration for a variety of rea­ sons, noted below. That said, the collective res­ toration efforts of many hands have brought us to this revelatory video and DVD release of a film which, until now, was doomed to unreel at half its original running time. The Sheperd/Bromberg restoration of THE
LOST WORLD had its premiere on October 28th, 2000 at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, and subsequently in Europe on November 10th at the Forum des Images in Paris. Its broadcast
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debut in France and Germany followed on De­ cember 14th, enhanced by an all-new contempo­ rary score by The Alloy Orchestra, which also accompanies the domestic VHS and DVD release from Image Entertainment, which was released last April. The Image DVD also offers a traditional orchestral score conducted by Robert Israel, among other extras.
Ï o tell the tale of this restoration, one must have a cursory knowledge of the film, or a pass­ ing familiarity with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 source novel THE LOST WORLD. In short, Conan Doyle’s classic adventure and its 1925 film adap­ tation proposed a confrontation between modern man and the prehistoric inhabitants of a remote plateau, cut off from time, deep in the jungles of South America. Both novel and film follow a Brit­ ish expedition led by the burly Professor Challenger (played by Wallace Beery), returning to the plateau
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